The present invention relates generally to advertising systems in which retail advertisements may be created at a centralized situs and distributed to one or more remote locations. Specifically, the present invention is directed to an advertisement method and system suited for advertising to consumers in retail stores.
Television and radio media have been recognized as a powerful and efficient medium for broadcasting advertising and entertainment content to a large, widely dispersed audience, e.g., potentially millions of television viewers. To that end, these media have traditionally garnered a major share of advertising budgets amounting to billions of dollars per year. The money directed toward advertising has increased the amount of advertisements to which television and radio audiences are exposed, resulting in sensory overload or audience resentment. The former results in the advertisement losing its impact and the latter resulting having a negative impact on the product being advertised. For example, many television audiences ignore commercials entirely by changing from one channel to another via their hand-held television remote control. It is estimated that one-fifth of all television viewers pay no attention to television commercials. Further, recent technological changes have drastically reduced the size of the television and radio audiences. Many individuals who would otherwise be in the television and radio audiences are preoccupied with cable television, video cassette recorders, compact diskette players and the Internet.
Finally, advertising through television and radio media frustrates attempts to taylor commercials to specific target audiences in a cost efficient manner. Due to the large undifferentiated audiences, advertisements over these media often reach individuals having little or no interest in the products being advertised or may not appreciate the message of the advertisement. Moreover, the cost of duplicating advertisements for a single product to target different audiences is usually not economically feasible. As a result, advertising dollars are ineffectively spent on messages that may reach the wrong audiences under the wrong circumstances.
To overcome these problems with advertising through television and radio media, several systems have been recently developed for displaying advertisements on television monitors positioned throughout a store, referred to herein as point-of-purchase advertisement systems. In-store advertising of this nature is particularly advantageous because the sight and action of television is combined with the impact of point-of-purchase to deliver a powerful and timely message in the retail store where buying decisions are being made.
For example, an advertising system known as Info-Channel produced by Scala, Inc., 1801 Robert Fulton Drive, Suite 400, Reston, Va. 22091, allows advertisement pages with text and illustrations to be transmitted from a control center to a network of television sets. Infochannel can also connect several television networks located in different buildings by using computers and modems which permit the advertisements to be sent to the remote locations over standard telephone lines. Control software known as InfoNet permits different advertisements to be sent to different locations automatically. Finally, InfoChannel includes means for broadcasting the advertisements to remote locations by inserting the advertisement data into a television channel""s free space in such a manner that the advertising data can be extracted from the television signal by the computers at each location. In this manner, broadcasts via satellite to thousands of locations can occur simultaneously.
Another advertising system known as AdVision produced by Video Arts Systems and Technology, Inc. of Sea Girt Village Center, 2175 Hwy. 35, #8-R, Sea Girt, N.J. 08750 delivers advertisements and electronic bulletin-board type presentations by means of a production workstation, and a plurality of receiving player systems positioned at remote locations. The advertisements are transmitted from the production workstation to the receiving player systems at the remote locations over cable television.
Similar to InfoChannel, a system known as Videofax produced by The Videofax Company, 60 Madison Avenue, Suite 903, New York, N.Y. 10010, enables still video images to be transmitted across standard telephone networks or corporate data networks to remote receiver systems, which then display the video images.
Another advertising system known as NewMedia produced by NewMedia Corporation of 201 North Union Street, Alexandria, Va. 22314 employs satellites or modems and telephone lines, to transmit advertisements from a digital studio to remote locations for display by computer or television monitors. A communications manager controls the file server of the data television network with appropriate data compression, inscription, forward error correction, format conversion and addressing to increase reception reliability.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,392,066 to Fisher et al. discloses an in-store advertising system for displaying advertisements that involves preparing graphical art from the actual products or from flat art, for each advertised product. Each frame is stored in computer memory as a digital graphics file. As desired, pricing and advertising copies are added as overlays to the digital art of each frame. Control data is defined for each frame indicating its destination location(s) and the run time for each destination location. The digital graphic files containing a digital frame and the respective control data for each frame are then loaded into an uplink control computer. The control data is analyzed by the uplink computer to compute an adlist which lists the digital frames and their respective destination. The uplink control computer is interfaced to a satellite addressable network control system (ANCS) to unmute the desired satellite receiver(s) at the remote location(s), based upon a predefined transmission script. The uplink computer then transmits the respective graphic files, control data and adlist via a satellite transmitter to a commercial broadcasting satellite. The remote receivers display the graphic data based on the code data.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,724,424 to Gifford discloses a system for the purchasing of goods or information over a computer network that includes merchant computers on a network to maintain databases of digital advertisements that are accessed by buyer computers. In response to user inquiries, buyer computers retrieve and display digital advertisements from merchant computers. A digital advertisement can include a program that is interpreted by a buyer""s computer. The buyer computers include a means for a user to purchase the product described by a digital advertisement. If a user has not specified a means of payment at the time of purchase, it can be requested after a purchase transaction is initiated. A network payment system performs payment order authorization in a network with untrusted switching, transmission, and host components. Payment orders are backed by accounts in an external financial system network, and the payment system obtains account authorizations from this external network in real-time. Payment orders are signed with authenticators that can be based on any combination of a secret function of the payment order parameters, a single-use transaction identifier, or a specified network address.
While the prior art point-of-purchase advertisement systems overcome many of the drawbacks associated with television and radio advertisements, the advertisement message provided by these systems are often lost among the myriad of static and print-oriented media proximate to the point of purchase advertisement system, e.g., signage and packing labels. As a result, the message of the advertisements are often lost in the clutter and the consumer often fails to either perceive the message of the advertisement or associate the message with the product being advertised.
What is needed, therefore, is a method and system for advertising products to consumers while the consumer is disposed proximate to the product being advertised while ensuring that the consumer is ready to perceive the message content of the advertisement.
An advertising method and system to disseminate information concerning multiple products includes a database containing the information and provides a perceivable stimulus to a consumer positioned proximate to site, with the site being remotely disposed with respect to the database. To disseminate the information, a set of software modules are employed which implement a set of functionalities intended to provide centralized management, remote distribution, and the stimulus. The stimulus is provided by playback of digitally encoded information which may include a stimulus that is either auditory, visual, olfactory, tactile or any combination thereof. The stimulus may be provided by a dedicated multimedia kiosk which includes a monitor, digital processor having a sound card and an input device, such as a keyboard or a mouse. In addition, the stimulus may be provided using products advertised for sell in the retail store where the consumer is located or in conjunction with a kiosk. The stimulus may be either interactive or non-interactive. For example, an interactive consumer stimulus may be initiated by a consumer scanning a UPC code on a product on interest.
Preferably, all the sites in a store are connected to a network and are able to store and present digital content both non-interactively and interactively on a per product basis. The network is connected to a centralized store server with the content for each of the store sites being stored therein in a database. The store server distributes advertisements to each of the store sites based upon a plurality of parameters, one of which is the proximity of the site to a product being advertised thereon. Content intended for playback in the retail store is received from a centralized database remotely disposed with respect to the store server. Dissemination of information concerning products are achieved based upon factors such as the products present in a store, as well as the timeliness of the information. Preferably, the information from the centralized database is disseminated via a satellite based network to the designated stores. The store server of each store, upon receiving the information, manages the process of distributing the same within the store. The store server acknowledges receipt of the information from the centralized database through a back-channel network which is then used to update central database. Additionally, statistics and logs which reflect consumer use patterns and operating conditions are gathered and returned to the centralized database. Critical error conditions are monitored throughout the information dissemination process and are conveyed the store server through a standard SNMP trapping mechanism which can be monitored for each installation.